Jewish Employee-Employer Relations

How Jewish law creates a balanced relationship between employers and employees

Virtually everyone, at some point in his or her life, is an employee or an employer, and almost everyone has experienced both healthy and unhealthy work environments.
Because the work we do influences our identities, social relations, and financial status, what happens in the workplace reverberates far beyond the office.

Our communal identity, too, reflects our experience as workers. The central narrative of the Jewish people involves our liberation from slavery, perhaps the worst imaginable work environment. Similarly, we cannot tell the story of Jews in America without mentioning the immigrant workers who suffered at the hands of sweatshop bosses and who created the first unions.

Given the centrality of work throughout Jewish history, it is no wonder that Jewish law expends significant energy on defining a set of labor laws designed to create a balanced relationship between employers and employees. Within these laws, each party has obligations toward the other and expectations of the other. Thus, employers are forbidden from delaying payment to workers, and employees are required to work diligently and not to steal employers' time.

Obligations on Employers

While making certain demands on workers, the bulk of Jewish labor law imposes obligations on employers. This emphasis on the responsibilities of employers reflects an understanding of the essential power imbalance between employers and employees, as well as an internalization of the exodus narrative. Often cited within discussions of labor law is the biblical verse, "they are my servants" (Leviticus 25:43), understood by the rabbis to imply "and not servants to servants." The experience of slavery and redemption instills within the lawmakers a wariness about any situation in which one person might, de facto, become the servant of another.

The central biblical text on the obligation of employers emphasizes the poverty of workers:

"Do not oppress the hired laborer who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your people or one of the sojourners in your land within your gates. Give him his wages in the daytime, and do not let the sun set on them, for he is poor, and his life depends on them, lest he cry out to God about you, for this will be counted as a sin for you" (Deuteronomy 24:14-15).

This text assumes a situation in which workers are hired and paid by the day. In our contemporary context, this may be compared to people paid by the hour--that is, people paid according to the time worked, and not according to the job completed.

Two Kinds of Workers

Jewish law differentiates between two categories of workers: the po'el, the type of worker described above, who is paid by the hour or by the day; and the kablan, a contractor paid for finishing a specific project. The kablan is generally described as a skilled worker, such as a carpenter, a repair person or an artisan. This person is less dependent on day-to-day wages than a poel and has greater leverage with the employer. A kablan whose employer refuses to pay, or pays too little can simply hold on to the item s/he has been hired to make or fix. Therefore, most of the laws protecting workers focus on the category of the poel, who is at the mercy of the employer.